There is a general lack of professional training opportunities for Swiss journalists. Journalism schools, press associations and other professional organizations that provide training in investigative skills are rare. There is in general insufficient training offered in the skills that are needed to execute strong watchdog journalism.
The public broadcaster SRG SSR runs an in-house training centre. SRG SSR puts effort into their professional training programme and calls up their employees to benefit from internal and external programmes during their whole career. Big publishing companies also offer internal courses for their employees. They put particular value on special courses in the field of new technology to keep current on the online sector. Thus, they have been cut down lately for reasons of lack of resources or no need. Even the large media conglomerate Ringier AG, which has been offering courses in its own School of Journalism (Journalistenschule) since 1974, has put training on hold. In German-speaking Switzerland, there is only one journalist’s training centre MAz (Schweizer Journalistenschule), which has offered journalism training courses since 1984.
